Turning Points in American History

May

Early American History Seminar Through Novanglus’s Eyes: Forms of Empire in India6 May 2014.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PMHari Vishwanadha, Santa Monica CollegeComment: Eliga H. Gould, University of New HampshireYankee merchants in the India trade successfully negotiated the competing claims of Indian society ...

Yankee merchants in the India trade successfully negotiated the competing claims of Indian society and the British Raj. As the empire flourished, the merchants prospered. The experiences of two prominent men, Henry Lee and Charles Eliot Norton, are representative of the rich and complex relationship among the three peoples and their cultures and served as a template for subsequent merchants engaged in the India trade during the nineteenth century.

Poverty and slavery are monumental problems – but today we assume they are separate problems. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, American and British observers struggled to distinguish the poor from the slave. Tracing a key shift in the moral imagination, my dissertation explores how the boundaries of poverty and slavery blurred during the so-called “age of emancipation.” I ask: how did poverty and slavery, as political categories and social conditions, entangle with one another in locations spanning the United States and the British Empire?

Member Event, Special Event John F. Kennedy Medal Presentation7 May 2014.Wednesday, 5:30PM - 7:00PMSOLD OUTThe event is sold out. If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please call 617-646-0552. ...

The event is sold out. If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please call 617-646-0552.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to attend the presentation of The John F. Kennedy Medal to David McCullough.

5:30 PM: reception

6:00 PM: presentation of the medal with remarks by David McCullough

Seating is limited.

The John F. Kennedy Medal is awarded by the Massachusetts Historical Society to persons who have rendered distinguished service to the cause of history. It is not limited to any field of history or to any particular kind of service to history.

Benjamin Blyth, the Salem artist of the Society’s iconic portraits of John and Abigail Adams, also left a large, delightful number of other portraits of local families, merchants, and participants in the American Revolution. His brother Samuel, a jack-of-all trades in the construction and home-decorating trades, was far more successful. But because of Benjamin’s flight from Salem to Virginia in 1782, he and his brother seemed to swap careers. Therein lies the tale.

Bettina A. Norton is a retired museum professional. She has published widely in her field, American historical prints. In later years, she was editor and publisher of The Beacon Hill Chronicle and is currently Editor Emerita of the Boston Musical Intelligencer. She is author of Edwin Whitefield: Nineteenth-Century North American Scenery; History of the Boston Naval Shipyard, 1800-1974; Trinity Church: The Story of an Episcopal Parish in the City of Boston; ‘To Create and Foster Architecture: History of the Boston Architectural Center; Prints at the Essex Institute; and over 60 articles on American graphic arts, architecture, and social history. She has lived with her family in a house on Beacon Hill since 1941, and in 1967 she founded Hill House, its community center.

This project traces the origins and evolution of nineteenth-century public educational theories and their significance to nation-building processes within the Americas. Focusing on the Atlantic seaboard cities of Boston in the United States and Buenos Aires in Argentina as case studies, it analyzes how educational ideas traveled and were reshaped by local conditions. The similarities in the nature and scope—and ultimately, the differences in the implementation—of educational policies in each city supports a larger analysis on the transformation of politics and the shaping of distinct national identities in the nineteenth-century Americas.

Series participants are invited on a walking tour of Boston’s Black Heritage Trail offered in conjunction with the Created Equal Film & Discussion Series. The tour is presented by our partner organization, Boston African American National Historic Site.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Alexander Graham Bell believed that his most important contribution was not the telephone, but his work to liberate the deaf by destroying their community. He came to Boston in 1871 to teach deaf children through oralism, a method that forbade the use of Sign Language and instead taught deaf children to speak. He quickly became an international leader of the oralist movement, but for the deaf who believed he was robbing them of their language, he became the culture’s greatest enemy.

Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts began on May 17, 2004, as a result of the ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which stated that it was unconstitutional under the Massachusetts Constitution to allow only opposite-sex couples to marry. Chief Justice Marshall will talk about this landmark decision.

Chief Justice Marshall is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, having retired from the Court in December 2010. Appointed to the position in 1999 by Governor A. Paul Cellucci, Chief Justice Marshall was the first woman to serve as Chief Justice, and the second woman appointed to serve as an Associate Justice in the Court's then three hundred and four year history when she was first appointed to the bench in 1996 by Governor William F. Weld.

Louisa Catherine Adams wrote in several genres, including letters, diaries, poetry, and memoirs. Bring your lunch and join us for a conversation with the editors who have prepared her work for publication, and a biographer who has used it. They will discuss what we can learn about Louisa by listening to her different voices.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

This talk examines the ways that political, economic, and military contests in the Floridas and Honduras during the era of the Seven Years War shaped imperial notions of British subjecthood. It also explores how questions related to who counted as a subject influenced British strategic thinking during a time of widely perceived Bourbon revanchism.

In commemoration of the Civil War battle of Fort Wagner led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and in cooperation with the Massachusetts Historical Society, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has organized the exhibition Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial.

The exhibition celebrates Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ magisterial Shaw Memorial (1883–1900). When Saint-Gaudens created the monument, he based his likeness of Shaw on photographs of the colonel, but for his depiction of the other soldiers, he hired African American men to pose in his studio. This exhibition seeks to make real the soldiers of the 54th represented anonymously in the memorial. It brings together vintage photographic portraits of members of the regiment and of the men and women who recruited, nursed, taught, and guided them.

Throughout the run of the exhibition special programs are planned in cooperation with the Museum of African American History, the Boston African American National Historic Site, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Company A, and the Friends of the Public Garden.

Bring your lunch and join us as we celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the 1924 U.S. Foreign Service Act ("The Rogers Act"), which created the US Foreign Service. We will explore the role of Massachusetts statesmen and diplomats in establishing the U.S. Foreign Service and in pioneering America's diplomatic history and tradition. The Rogers Act was authored by Massachusetts Congressman, John Jacob Rogers (1912-1925) of Lowell, Massachusetts, supported in the US Senate by Henry Cabot Lodge, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1893-1924), and signed into law by former Massachusetts Governor, President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929). Men from Massachusetts have also played important roles in America's diplomatic corps, from Boston-born American envoy Benjamin Franklin (America's first diplomat at the father of American diplomacy) to our current Secretary of State, former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

HdG, Dna. Maria St. Catherine McConnell is a U.S.-, U.N.-, Vatican-trained & Oxford-educated diplomatic scholar formerly with The American Academy of Diplomacy, and a member of the American Foreign Service Association. She heads the Franklin-Rogers MA Public Commission on American Diplomacy & The U.S. Foreign Service, whose mission includes the promotion of knowledge and appreciation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as "the birth-state of American diplomacy."

Counterfeiting was a ubiquitous problem in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, encouraged by the unstandardized and various nature of eighteenth-century currency. Counterfeiters formed regional and trans-Atlantic networks to produce and circulate debased and forged coin, both British and foreign, and faked reproductions of newly available paper notes. Reconstructing these networks, I argue that counterfeiters shaped imperial economies in unexpected ways, impacting everything from daily economic practices to the course of economic development, and prompted complex discussions about value, worth and trust in an expanding commercial empire.

Public Program, Author Talk The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941–194228 May 2014.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PMPre-Talk reception at 5:30pmNigel HamiltonBased on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt ...

Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful—and underappreciated—command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR’s White House Oval Study—his personal command center—and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.

Time and again, FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren’t ready. When Churchill insisted his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton’s account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies’ favor and FDR’s genius for psychology and military affairs is clear.

Nigel Hamilton is a bestselling and award-winning biographer of President John F. Kennedy, General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, and President Bill Clinton, among other subjects. He is a Senior Fellow in the McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and first president of the Biographers International Organization (BIO).

Join us on Monday, June 2, at the Hogan Campus Center, College of the Holy Cross, for a thought-provoking day examining women in Massachusetts history. At this, the tenth annual Mass History Conference we will welcome the many small historical organizations that preserve, interpret, and deepen the exploration of Massachusetts history. The stories of lesser-known women change-makers get lost in the larger narrative of industry, politics and conflict, but the timing is right for an examination of their tales of great and compelling variety, of lives lived with courage and determination.

The conference is widely celebrated as the best networking and skill-sharing opportunity for historians of our state culture.

Brown Bag Creating Adams Family Values4 June 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMSara Georgini, Adams Papers and Boston UniversityThis project is a history of religion in the Adams family of Massachusetts from 1583 to 1927. Most ...

This project is a history of religion in the Adams family of Massachusetts from 1583 to 1927. Most Adams family members accepted organized religion as a public good, but they filled letters and lives with the effort to answer one query: What was it good for? As men and women operating at the heart of the nation, prevailing notions of Christian citizenship laid out duties for them to fulfill, and the Adamses repeatedly sought out God for help. Drawing on the public and private papers of several generations, this project explores the “cosmopolitan Christianity” that the Adams family developed over time.

Public Program A Conversation with David S. Ferriero4 June 2014.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PMPre-Talk reception at 5:30pmDavid S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United StatesDavid S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United States on November 6, 2009. ...

David S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United States on November 6, 2009. Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL). He was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.Before joining the NYPL in 2004, Mr. Ferriero served in top positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University. In those positions, he led major initiatives including the expansion of facilities, the adoption of digital technologies, and a reengineering of printing and publications.

Mr. Ferriero earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Northeastern University in Boston and a master’s degree from the Simmons College of Library and Information Science, also in Boston. After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he started in the humanities library at MIT, where he worked for 31 years, rising to associate director for public services and acting co-director of libraries.

MHS Annual Meeting11 June 2014.Wednesday, 5:00PM - 6:00PMThis event is open only to MHS FellowsMHS Fellows are invited to attend the Society's annual business meeting followed by a talk and ...

MHS Fellows are invited to attend the Society's annual business meeting followed by a talk and reception for Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War. Registration required.

5:00 PMAnnual Meeting for elected MHS Fellows

6:00 PM Remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey followed by a reception and exhibition preview for MHS Fellows and Members

Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview reception of Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country. The evening will begin with remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey. A reception and exhibition viewing will follow.

To commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, the MHS has organized the exhibition Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War focusing on two of the hundreds of women from the Commonwealth who went to France as members of the U.S. armed forces, the Red Cross, and other war relief organizations. From the Society’s extraordinary collection of women’s recollections, this exhibition features photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia related to Margaret Hall and Eleanor (Nora) Saltonstall, Red Cross volunteers in France. The exhibition will highlight Hall’s large-format photographs of the battlefront on loan from the Cohasset Historical Society. Both women were keen observers of the climactic months of the war and depicted what they witnessed in vivid detail.

To commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, the MHS has organized the exhibition Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War focusing on two of the hundreds of women from the Commonwealth who went to France as members of the U.S. armed forces, the Red Cross, and other war relief organizations.

From the Society’s extraordinary collection of women’s recollections, this exhibition features photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia related to Margaret Hall and Eleanor (Nora) Saltonstall, Red Cross volunteers in France. The exhibition will highlight Hall’s large-format photographs of the battlefront on loan from the Cohasset Historical Society. Both women were keen observers of the climactic months of the war and depicted what they witnessed in vivid detail.

Public Program Lost Boston13 June 2014.Friday, 2:00PM - 3:00PMAnthony SammarcoHistorian and author Anthony Sammarco will explore some of the sixty-eight houses, churches, ...

Historian and author Anthony Sammarco will explore some of the sixty-eight houses, churches, libraries, clubs, squares and baseball fields that have been lost by demolition, fire, or neglect since the 1870s. His new book, Lost Boston, is a nostalgic journey back in time to visit some of the disappeared buildings and spaces in all their grandeur. Some lost places include Boston City Hall, Boston Coliseum, Boylston Market, Merchants Exchange, Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cyclorama, East Boston Airport, Braves Field, the Massachusetts State Prison, Boston Opera House, South Boston Aquarium, and the Howard Athenaeum.

Anthony M. Sammarco is a noted historian and author of sixty books on the history and development of Boston, and he lectures widely on the history and development of his native city. He commenced writing in 1995, and his books Dorchester and The Baker Chocolate Company: A Sweet History have made the bestsellers list. Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era, Dorchester: Volume II, Dorchester Then & Now, Boston’s North End (and Il North End di Boston in Italian) and the Great Boston Fire of 1872, are among his perennially popular books. Since 1996, Mr. Sammarco has taught history at the Urban College of Boston, where he was named educator of the year in 2003 and where he serves on the Leadership Council. He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a member of the Boston Author's Club and the Boston Athenaeum.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Called America's real-life Robinson Crusoe, the true story of Philip Ashton--a nineteen-year-old fisherman captured by pirates, impressed as a crewman, subjected to torture and hardship, who eventually escaped and lived as a castaway and scavenger on a deserted island in the Caribbean--was at one time as well known as the tales of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Defoe. Based on a rare copy of Ashton's 1725 account, author Gregory N. Flemming's vivid portrait recounts this maritime world during the golden age of piracy. Fishing vessels and merchantmen plied the coastal waters and crisscrossed the Atlantic and Caribbean. It was a hard, dangerous life, made more so by both the depredations and temptations of piracy. Chased by the British Royal Navy, blown out of the water or summarily hung when caught, pirate captains such as Edward Low kidnapped, cajoled, beat, and bribed men like Ashton into the rich--but also vile, brutal, and often short--life of the pirate. Flemming drew not only on Ashton's own first-person account of his experiences, but a wealth of other materialsfrom the Massachusetts Historical Society's collections, including hundreds of colonial newspaper reports, trial records, and the hand-written logbooks and correspondence from the British warships that patrolled the Bay of Honduras and fought with Low's pirates.

Gregory N. Flemming is a former journalist who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives with his family in New England. His website is www.gregflemming.com.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

In 1839, when the French-born daguerreotype arrived in the United States, it was hardly clear that the photographic process would be used as a political weapon. Examining the production, exchange and visuality of photographs of abolitionists, this talk shows how radical activists harnessed the medium as a way to build their movement in the decades prior to the Civil War.

This study explores biblical and constitutional debates over slavery in the antebellum era. It argues that the developing slavery crisis fueled the move to understand both the Bible and the Constitution as historical texts. It also contends that the emphasis on contextual interpretation among biblical scholars in the first few decades of the nineteenth century informed a similar reading of the Constitution in the decades before the Civil War. It demonstrates that these overlapping developments cultivated an awareness of the historical distances that divided Americans from their favored biblical and Revolutionary pasts.

In conjunction with the exhibition Magna Carta: Cornerstone of Liberty, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Massachusetts Historical Society will offer a two-day professional development workshop for teachers in grades K-12 that will provide an introduction to the rich collections of 18th-century documents and objects at both institutions. The workshop will include lectures, hands-on activities in the classroom, and gallery explorations using primary source documents and original art objects related to the founding of the United States.

One of only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta—an inspiration for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—is on view at the MFA this summer in partnership with the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Magna Carta—Latin for “Great Charter”— joins other historical documents and objects, as well as portraits and works of art from the Museum’s collection, to tell the story of patriots and revolutionaries who fought for freedom in the face of tyranny. The exhibition also includes portraits, marble busts, and historical documents related to several of the Founding Fathers, presidents, and abolitionists, particularly from Massachusetts, who were inspired by the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta.

Registration Fee: $100

Registration covers admission to the MFA, lunch both days, and materials. Participants can earn one graduate credit from Framingham State University for an additional fee. Visit the MFA website to register.

In conjunction with the exhibition Magna Carta: Cornerstone of Liberty, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Massachusetts Historical Society will offer a two-day professional development workshop for teachers in grades K-12 that will provide an introduction to the rich collections of 18th-century documents and objects at both institutions. The workshop will include lectures, hands-on activities in the classroom, and gallery explorations using primary source documents and original art objects related to the founding of the United States.

One of only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta—an inspiration for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—is on view at the MFA this summer in partnership with the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Magna Carta—Latin for “Great Charter”— joins other historical documents and objects, as well as portraits and works of art from the Museum’s collection, to tell the story of patriots and revolutionaries who fought for freedom in the face of tyranny. The exhibition also includes portraits, marble busts, and historical documents related to several of the Founding Fathers, presidents, and abolitionists, particularly from Massachusetts, who were inspired by the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta.

Registration Fee: $100

Registration covers admission to the MFA, lunch both days, and materials. Participants can earn one graduate credit from Framingham State University for an additional fee. Visit the MFA website to register.

From its foundations in the diagrammatic habits of sixteenth-century England to its intercourse with the new science of infinity, Puritanism applied a series of quantitative strategies for understanding an arbitrary God and the perfection of his decrees. This program argues that, simultaneously as these quantifications failed, their very failure inspired the imaginative leap between sensory and intelligible things that Puritanism made requisite for knowledge of God and one’s grace.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

This project seeks to provide a fuller picture of the way that European Romantic texts functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting a group of “Cautious Romantics” that emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition in America between 1800 and the late 19th century. They retained a commitment to a settled social order and embraced the Trinitarian Christianity long since abandoned by the Transcendentalists and their Unitarian predecessors. This program will focus on how the Dana Family functions as a critical lens through which one can view the larger Cautious Romantic discourse.

The land surveyor was a key figure in early America—instrumental in everything from marking colonial boundaries to measuring the smallest parcel of a farmer’s land. Adapting European methods to American conditions, surveyors drafted a “creole science” that served the demands of imperial authorities and common settlers alike. Together they transformed land into liberty, property, and a territorial empire.

Public Program, Author Talk "What is Focus?" Margaret Hall's Battle Country15 July 2014.Tuesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PMPre-Talk reception at 5:30pmMargaret Higonnet, University of ConnecticutComments by Susan Solomon and Suzanne DiefenbachBetween August 1918 and August 1919, Cohasset, Mass., native Margaret Hall served as a volunteer in ...

Between August 1918 and August 1919, Cohasset, Mass., native Margaret Hall served as a volunteer in the canteen service with the Red Cross in France. Using letters, diaries, and photographs, she created an unusual typescript, Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country, 1918-1919, when she returned home from the Great War. Pasted opposite the relevant sections of the narrative are roughly 281 photographs and other memorabilia. Starting in August 1918, Hall captured in rich detail her passage from New York to France, her pursuit of a Red Cross posting as close to the front as possible, and then her day-to-day experiences at a canteen at Châlons sur Marne, where she continued to work for a number of months following the Armistice in November 1918. Her photographs document a significant range of her war experience, from the quotidian life at Châlons sur Marne to the exploration of battlefields at Longwy and Verdun.

Margaret R. Higonnet, the volume’s editor, is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, and an Affiliate at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. At the intersection of feminist theory with history and comparative literature, she has published extensively on gender and World War I, editing Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987), Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War I (1999), and Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of War (2001).

Susan Solomon is Yardımcı Doçent (or Assistant Professor) of Humanities, Western Languages and Literatures, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She will comment on her research into the life and photographs of Margaret Hall.

Suzanne Diefenbach is Margaret Hall's great niece. She will share her recollections of "Aunts" and life with her at Paradise Hill Farm in Hull, Massachusetts.

To Reserve: Register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560.

This project explores the changing texture and relationship of trade and diplomacy between American and Chinese traders and diplomats from 1784 to the 1860s. The consumption of luxury goods by both Americans and Chinese and the relationship between the U.S. and Great Britain abroad both helped to shape U.S.-China diplomacy in the nineteenth century. This program will present an overview of the project but will focus on findings from traders' records at the MHS.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

From Massachusetts to Australia, justices of the peace and other equivalent magistrates provided an exportable unit of local government responsible for the vast majority of judicial and administrative decisions. This project investigates how shared assumptions about magisterial authority contributed to the construction of new jurisdictions incorporating non-English lands and peoples. In New England, this British model of local government proved so adaptable that it allowed justices of the peace to assert independence during a period of imperial crisis.

This presentation will provide a brief historical overview of the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, a massive public-works project that led to the disincorporation of four rural towns in the western portion of the Commonwealth and radically transformed 39 square miles of land during the 1930s and 1940s. After tracing the arc of this story, it will delve into the environmental worldview and vision of the Quabbin project held by Arthur Shurcliff, the landscape architect employed by the Boston Metropolitan District Commission to reform the grounds surrounding this new, artificial lake.

Young people fueled American democracy at its most popular. Between 1840 and 1900, children, youths and young adults turned out at rallies and elections, searching for identity, advancement, and fun. Many viewed the political system as a route to adulthood, during a period of major social instability. At the same time, politicians wooed first-time “virgin voters,” lobbied young women to influence the men in their lives, and recruited children as future partisans. Their interest helped bring about the highest voter turnouts in U.S. history. This project explores this fascinating and forgotten relationship between public politics and personal aspirations.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Teacher Workshop, Public Programbegins Old Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation30 July 2014.Wednesday, 8:30AM - 3:30PMThis workshop will take place in Milford, New Hampshire, and Pepperell, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Freedom's Way National Heritage AreaWhat was it like to live in a town that had existed for years (if not a full century or more) before ...

What was it like to live in a town that had existed for years (if not a full century or more) before becoming part of a new nation in 1776? Designed for educators and local history enthusiasts, this workshop will explore some of the social, cultural, economic, and political concerns expressed by New England towns as the United States was attempting to form a new government in the 1780s and 1790s. We will discuss the truly participatory, well-informed conversations taking place in town halls and meeting places throughout the new colonies-turned-states. By turning an eye towards local politics and events we will rediscover the ways in which “ordinary people” contributed to America’s creation story.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

investigate what it was like to live in an old town in a new country and discover what changed for the inhabitants of different towns as new government structures were implemented.

discuss the concerns (both local and national) expressed by Massachusetts & New Hampshire residents in various towns while the American government was being created in the years after the revolution.

explore the ways in which geography, economy, and social/cultural practices influenced local concerns.

discover evidence of local concerns, and discussions of national policies, in primary sources held by local repositories and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

explore new ways of engaging students and local communities in their history.

There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

This project examines the shifting perceptions of spirituous liquors in the Atlantic World throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the rise of commercial distilling, particularly in regard to rum, gin, and whiskey, this research explores the evolution of liquors from their use a wholesome source of medicine to a pernicious, societal threat.

Teacher Workshop, Public Programends Old Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation31 July 2014.Thursday, 8:30AM - 3:30PMThis workshop will take place in Milford, New Hampshire, and Pepperell, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Freedom's Way National Heritage AreaWhat was it like to live in a town that had existed for years (if not a full century or more) before ...

What was it like to live in a town that had existed for years (if not a full century or more) before becoming part of a new nation in 1776? Designed for educators and local history enthusiasts, this workshop will explore some of the social, cultural, economic, and political concerns expressed by New England towns as the United States was attempting to form a new government in the 1780s and 1790s. We will discuss the truly participatory, well-informed conversations taking place in town halls and meeting places throughout the new colonies-turned-states. By turning an eye towards local politics and events we will rediscover the ways in which “ordinary people” contributed to America’s creation story.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

investigate what it was like to live in an old town in a new country and discover what changed for the inhabitants of different towns as new government structures were implemented.

discuss the concerns (both local and national) expressed by Massachusetts & New Hampshire residents in various towns while the American government was being created in the years after the revolution.

explore the ways in which geography, economy, and social/cultural practices influenced local concerns.

discover evidence of local concerns, and discussions of national policies, in primary sources held by local repositories and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

explore new ways of engaging students and local communities in their history.

There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

Early American History SeminarThrough Novanglus’s Eyes: Forms of Empire in India6 May 2014.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PMHari Vishwanadha, Santa Monica CollegeComment: Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire

Yankee merchants in the India trade successfully negotiated the competing claims of Indian society and the British Raj. As the empire flourished, the merchants prospered. The experiences of two prominent men, Henry Lee and Charles Eliot Norton, are representative of the rich and complex relationship among the three peoples and their cultures and served as a template for subsequent merchants engaged in the India trade during the nineteenth century.

Brown BagThe Poor Always with You: Poverty in an Age of Emancipation, 1833-18797 May 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMChris Florio, Princeton University

Poverty and slavery are monumental problems – but today we assume they are separate problems. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, American and British observers struggled to distinguish the poor from the slave. Tracing a key shift in the moral imagination, my dissertation explores how the boundaries of poverty and slavery blurred during the so-called “age of emancipation.” I ask: how did poverty and slavery, as political categories and social conditions, entangle with one another in locations spanning the United States and the British Empire?

The event is sold out. If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please call 617-646-0552.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to attend the presentation of The John F. Kennedy Medal to David McCullough.

5:30 PM: reception

6:00 PM: presentation of the medal with remarks by David McCullough

Seating is limited.

The John F. Kennedy Medal is awarded by the Massachusetts Historical Society to persons who have rendered distinguished service to the cause of history. It is not limited to any field of history or to any particular kind of service to history.

Benjamin Blyth, the Salem artist of the Society’s iconic portraits of John and Abigail Adams, also left a large, delightful number of other portraits of local families, merchants, and participants in the American Revolution. His brother Samuel, a jack-of-all trades in the construction and home-decorating trades, was far more successful. But because of Benjamin’s flight from Salem to Virginia in 1782, he and his brother seemed to swap careers. Therein lies the tale.

Bettina A. Norton is a retired museum professional. She has published widely in her field, American historical prints. In later years, she was editor and publisher of The Beacon Hill Chronicle and is currently Editor Emerita of the Boston Musical Intelligencer. She is author of Edwin Whitefield: Nineteenth-Century North American Scenery; History of the Boston Naval Shipyard, 1800-1974; Trinity Church: The Story of an Episcopal Parish in the City of Boston; ‘To Create and Foster Architecture: History of the Boston Architectural Center; Prints at the Essex Institute; and over 60 articles on American graphic arts, architecture, and social history. She has lived with her family in a house on Beacon Hill since 1941, and in 1967 she founded Hill House, its community center.

This project traces the origins and evolution of nineteenth-century public educational theories and their significance to nation-building processes within the Americas. Focusing on the Atlantic seaboard cities of Boston in the United States and Buenos Aires in Argentina as case studies, it analyzes how educational ideas traveled and were reshaped by local conditions. The similarities in the nature and scope—and ultimately, the differences in the implementation—of educational policies in each city supports a larger analysis on the transformation of politics and the shaping of distinct national identities in the nineteenth-century Americas.

Series participants are invited on a walking tour of Boston’s Black Heritage Trail offered in conjunction with the Created Equal Film & Discussion Series. The tour is presented by our partner organization, Boston African American National Historic Site.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS10 May 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Alexander Graham Bell believed that his most important contribution was not the telephone, but his work to liberate the deaf by destroying their community. He came to Boston in 1871 to teach deaf children through oralism, a method that forbade the use of Sign Language and instead taught deaf children to speak. He quickly became an international leader of the oralist movement, but for the deaf who believed he was robbing them of their language, he became the culture’s greatest enemy.

Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts began on May 17, 2004, as a result of the ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which stated that it was unconstitutional under the Massachusetts Constitution to allow only opposite-sex couples to marry. Chief Justice Marshall will talk about this landmark decision.

Chief Justice Marshall is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, having retired from the Court in December 2010. Appointed to the position in 1999 by Governor A. Paul Cellucci, Chief Justice Marshall was the first woman to serve as Chief Justice, and the second woman appointed to serve as an Associate Justice in the Court's then three hundred and four year history when she was first appointed to the bench in 1996 by Governor William F. Weld.

Louisa Catherine Adams wrote in several genres, including letters, diaries, poetry, and memoirs. Bring your lunch and join us for a conversation with the editors who have prepared her work for publication, and a biographer who has used it. They will discuss what we can learn about Louisa by listening to her different voices.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS17 May 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Brown BagPostponed:
POSTPONED - NEW DATE TBA Securing the Spanish Main: British Subjecthood and the Peace of 176321 May 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMBryan Rosenblithe, Columbia University

This talk examines the ways that political, economic, and military contests in the Floridas and Honduras during the era of the Seven Years War shaped imperial notions of British subjecthood. It also explores how questions related to who counted as a subject influenced British strategic thinking during a time of widely perceived Bourbon revanchism.

ExhibitionTell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial23 May 2014.Friday, 10:00AM - 4:00PMOpen Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PMThe exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

In commemoration of the Civil War battle of Fort Wagner led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and in cooperation with the Massachusetts Historical Society, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has organized the exhibition Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial.

The exhibition celebrates Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ magisterial Shaw Memorial (1883–1900). When Saint-Gaudens created the monument, he based his likeness of Shaw on photographs of the colonel, but for his depiction of the other soldiers, he hired African American men to pose in his studio. This exhibition seeks to make real the soldiers of the 54th represented anonymously in the memorial. It brings together vintage photographic portraits of members of the regiment and of the men and women who recruited, nursed, taught, and guided them.

Throughout the run of the exhibition special programs are planned in cooperation with the Museum of African American History, the Boston African American National Historic Site, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Company A, and the Friends of the Public Garden.

Public ProgramCelebrating the 90th Anniversary of the U.S. Foreign Service23 May 2014.Friday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMHdG, Dna. Maria St. Catherine McConnell

Bring your lunch and join us as we celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the 1924 U.S. Foreign Service Act ("The Rogers Act"), which created the US Foreign Service. We will explore the role of Massachusetts statesmen and diplomats in establishing the U.S. Foreign Service and in pioneering America's diplomatic history and tradition. The Rogers Act was authored by Massachusetts Congressman, John Jacob Rogers (1912-1925) of Lowell, Massachusetts, supported in the US Senate by Henry Cabot Lodge, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1893-1924), and signed into law by former Massachusetts Governor, President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929). Men from Massachusetts have also played important roles in America's diplomatic corps, from Boston-born American envoy Benjamin Franklin (America's first diplomat at the father of American diplomacy) to our current Secretary of State, former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

HdG, Dna. Maria St. Catherine McConnell is a U.S.-, U.N.-, Vatican-trained & Oxford-educated diplomatic scholar formerly with The American Academy of Diplomacy, and a member of the American Foreign Service Association. She heads the Franklin-Rogers MA Public Commission on American Diplomacy & The U.S. Foreign Service, whose mission includes the promotion of knowledge and appreciation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as "the birth-state of American diplomacy."

Brown BagCirculating Counterfeits: Making Money and Its Meanings in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic28 May 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMKatherine Smoak, The Johns Hopkins University

Counterfeiting was a ubiquitous problem in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, encouraged by the unstandardized and various nature of eighteenth-century currency. Counterfeiters formed regional and trans-Atlantic networks to produce and circulate debased and forged coin, both British and foreign, and faked reproductions of newly available paper notes. Reconstructing these networks, I argue that counterfeiters shaped imperial economies in unexpected ways, impacting everything from daily economic practices to the course of economic development, and prompted complex discussions about value, worth and trust in an expanding commercial empire.

Based on years of archival research and interviews with the last surviving aides and Roosevelt family members, Nigel Hamilton offers a definitive account of FDR’s masterful—and underappreciated—command of the Allied war effort. Hamilton takes readers inside FDR’s White House Oval Study—his personal command center—and into the meetings where he battled with Churchill about strategy and tactics and overrode the near mutinies of his own generals and secretary of war.

Time and again, FDR was proven right and his allies and generals were wrong. When the generals wanted to attack the Nazi-fortified coast of France, FDR knew the Allied forces weren’t ready. When Churchill insisted his Far East colonies were loyal and would resist the Japanese, Roosevelt knew it was a fantasy. As Hamilton’s account reaches its climax with the Torch landings in North Africa in late 1942, the tide of war turns in the Allies’ favor and FDR’s genius for psychology and military affairs is clear.

Nigel Hamilton is a bestselling and award-winning biographer of President John F. Kennedy, General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, and President Bill Clinton, among other subjects. He is a Senior Fellow in the McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and first president of the Biographers International Organization (BIO).

ConferenceNever Done: Interpreting the History of Women at Work in Massachusetts2 June 2014.Monday, 9:00AM - 4:00PMThis conference will take place at the College of the Holy Cross in WorcesterKeynote Speaker: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

Join us on Monday, June 2, at the Hogan Campus Center, College of the Holy Cross, for a thought-provoking day examining women in Massachusetts history. At this, the tenth annual Mass History Conference we will welcome the many small historical organizations that preserve, interpret, and deepen the exploration of Massachusetts history. The stories of lesser-known women change-makers get lost in the larger narrative of industry, politics and conflict, but the timing is right for an examination of their tales of great and compelling variety, of lives lived with courage and determination.

The conference is widely celebrated as the best networking and skill-sharing opportunity for historians of our state culture.

This project is a history of religion in the Adams family of Massachusetts from 1583 to 1927. Most Adams family members accepted organized religion as a public good, but they filled letters and lives with the effort to answer one query: What was it good for? As men and women operating at the heart of the nation, prevailing notions of Christian citizenship laid out duties for them to fulfill, and the Adamses repeatedly sought out God for help. Drawing on the public and private papers of several generations, this project explores the “cosmopolitan Christianity” that the Adams family developed over time.

Public ProgramA Conversation with David S. Ferriero4 June 2014.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PMPre-Talk reception at 5:30pmDavid S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

David S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United States on November 6, 2009. Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL). He was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.Before joining the NYPL in 2004, Mr. Ferriero served in top positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University. In those positions, he led major initiatives including the expansion of facilities, the adoption of digital technologies, and a reengineering of printing and publications.

Mr. Ferriero earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Northeastern University in Boston and a master’s degree from the Simmons College of Library and Information Science, also in Boston. After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he started in the humanities library at MIT, where he worked for 31 years, rising to associate director for public services and acting co-director of libraries.

MHS Annual Meeting11 June 2014.Wednesday, 5:00PM - 6:00PMThis event is open only to MHS Fellows

MHS Fellows are invited to attend the Society's annual business meeting followed by a talk and reception for Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War. Registration required.

5:00 PMAnnual Meeting for elected MHS Fellows

6:00 PM Remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey followed by a reception and exhibition preview for MHS Fellows and Members

Special Event, Member EventLetters and Photographs from the Battle Country Preview Reception11 June 2014.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 8:00PMThis event is open only to MHS Fellows and Members

Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview reception of Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country. The evening will begin with remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey. A reception and exhibition viewing will follow.

To commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, the MHS has organized the exhibition Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War focusing on two of the hundreds of women from the Commonwealth who went to France as members of the U.S. armed forces, the Red Cross, and other war relief organizations. From the Society’s extraordinary collection of women’s recollections, this exhibition features photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia related to Margaret Hall and Eleanor (Nora) Saltonstall, Red Cross volunteers in France. The exhibition will highlight Hall’s large-format photographs of the battlefront on loan from the Cohasset Historical Society. Both women were keen observers of the climactic months of the war and depicted what they witnessed in vivid detail.

ExhibitionLetters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War12 June 2014 to 24 January 2015Open Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PM

To commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, the MHS has organized the exhibition Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: Massachusetts Women in the First World War focusing on two of the hundreds of women from the Commonwealth who went to France as members of the U.S. armed forces, the Red Cross, and other war relief organizations.

From the Society’s extraordinary collection of women’s recollections, this exhibition features photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia related to Margaret Hall and Eleanor (Nora) Saltonstall, Red Cross volunteers in France. The exhibition will highlight Hall’s large-format photographs of the battlefront on loan from the Cohasset Historical Society. Both women were keen observers of the climactic months of the war and depicted what they witnessed in vivid detail.

Historian and author Anthony Sammarco will explore some of the sixty-eight houses, churches, libraries, clubs, squares and baseball fields that have been lost by demolition, fire, or neglect since the 1870s. His new book, Lost Boston, is a nostalgic journey back in time to visit some of the disappeared buildings and spaces in all their grandeur. Some lost places include Boston City Hall, Boston Coliseum, Boylston Market, Merchants Exchange, Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cyclorama, East Boston Airport, Braves Field, the Massachusetts State Prison, Boston Opera House, South Boston Aquarium, and the Howard Athenaeum.

Anthony M. Sammarco is a noted historian and author of sixty books on the history and development of Boston, and he lectures widely on the history and development of his native city. He commenced writing in 1995, and his books Dorchester and The Baker Chocolate Company: A Sweet History have made the bestsellers list. Boston’s Back Bay in the Victorian Era, Dorchester: Volume II, Dorchester Then & Now, Boston’s North End (and Il North End di Boston in Italian) and the Great Boston Fire of 1872, are among his perennially popular books. Since 1996, Mr. Sammarco has taught history at the Urban College of Boston, where he was named educator of the year in 2003 and where he serves on the Leadership Council. He is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a member of the Boston Author's Club and the Boston Athenaeum.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS14 June 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Public ProgramAt the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton19 June 2014.Thursday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMGregory N. Flemming

Called America's real-life Robinson Crusoe, the true story of Philip Ashton--a nineteen-year-old fisherman captured by pirates, impressed as a crewman, subjected to torture and hardship, who eventually escaped and lived as a castaway and scavenger on a deserted island in the Caribbean--was at one time as well known as the tales of Cooper, Hawthorne, and Defoe. Based on a rare copy of Ashton's 1725 account, author Gregory N. Flemming's vivid portrait recounts this maritime world during the golden age of piracy. Fishing vessels and merchantmen plied the coastal waters and crisscrossed the Atlantic and Caribbean. It was a hard, dangerous life, made more so by both the depredations and temptations of piracy. Chased by the British Royal Navy, blown out of the water or summarily hung when caught, pirate captains such as Edward Low kidnapped, cajoled, beat, and bribed men like Ashton into the rich--but also vile, brutal, and often short--life of the pirate. Flemming drew not only on Ashton's own first-person account of his experiences, but a wealth of other materialsfrom the Massachusetts Historical Society's collections, including hundreds of colonial newspaper reports, trial records, and the hand-written logbooks and correspondence from the British warships that patrolled the Bay of Honduras and fought with Low's pirates.

Gregory N. Flemming is a former journalist who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lives with his family in New England. His website is www.gregflemming.com.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS21 June 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS28 June 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Brown BagThe Camera and the Community: How Photography Changed American Abolitionism2 July 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMMatthew Fox-Amato, University of Southern California

In 1839, when the French-born daguerreotype arrived in the United States, it was hardly clear that the photographic process would be used as a political weapon. Examining the production, exchange and visuality of photographs of abolitionists, this talk shows how radical activists harnessed the medium as a way to build their movement in the decades prior to the Civil War.

This study explores biblical and constitutional debates over slavery in the antebellum era. It argues that the developing slavery crisis fueled the move to understand both the Bible and the Constitution as historical texts. It also contends that the emphasis on contextual interpretation among biblical scholars in the first few decades of the nineteenth century informed a similar reading of the Constitution in the decades before the Civil War. It demonstrates that these overlapping developments cultivated an awareness of the historical distances that divided Americans from their favored biblical and Revolutionary pasts.

Teacher WorkshopSymbols of Liberty: The Magna Carta, the Liberty Bowl, and the American Revolution10 July 2014 to 11 July 2014This event will take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston & the Massachusetts Historical Society.

In conjunction with the exhibition Magna Carta: Cornerstone of Liberty, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Massachusetts Historical Society will offer a two-day professional development workshop for teachers in grades K-12 that will provide an introduction to the rich collections of 18th-century documents and objects at both institutions. The workshop will include lectures, hands-on activities in the classroom, and gallery explorations using primary source documents and original art objects related to the founding of the United States.

One of only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta—an inspiration for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights—is on view at the MFA this summer in partnership with the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Magna Carta—Latin for “Great Charter”— joins other historical documents and objects, as well as portraits and works of art from the Museum’s collection, to tell the story of patriots and revolutionaries who fought for freedom in the face of tyranny. The exhibition also includes portraits, marble busts, and historical documents related to several of the Founding Fathers, presidents, and abolitionists, particularly from Massachusetts, who were inspired by the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta.

Registration Fee: $100

Registration covers admission to the MFA, lunch both days, and materials. Participants can earn one graduate credit from Framingham State University for an additional fee. Visit the MFA website to register.

Brown BagOf Form and Failure: American Puritanism, Quantification, and the Way of All Grace11 July 2014.Friday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMRachel Trocchio, University of California, Berkeley

From its foundations in the diagrammatic habits of sixteenth-century England to its intercourse with the new science of infinity, Puritanism applied a series of quantitative strategies for understanding an arbitrary God and the perfection of his decrees. This program argues that, simultaneously as these quantifications failed, their very failure inspired the imaginative leap between sensory and intelligible things that Puritanism made requisite for knowledge of God and one’s grace.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS12 July 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

This project seeks to provide a fuller picture of the way that European Romantic texts functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting a group of “Cautious Romantics” that emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition in America between 1800 and the late 19th century. They retained a commitment to a settled social order and embraced the Trinitarian Christianity long since abandoned by the Transcendentalists and their Unitarian predecessors. This program will focus on how the Dana Family functions as a critical lens through which one can view the larger Cautious Romantic discourse.

Brown BagLand, Liberty, & Property: Surveyors and the Production of Empire in British North America15 July 2014.Tuesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMMark L. Thompson, University of Groningen

The land surveyor was a key figure in early America—instrumental in everything from marking colonial boundaries to measuring the smallest parcel of a farmer’s land. Adapting European methods to American conditions, surveyors drafted a “creole science” that served the demands of imperial authorities and common settlers alike. Together they transformed land into liberty, property, and a territorial empire.

Between August 1918 and August 1919, Cohasset, Mass., native Margaret Hall served as a volunteer in the canteen service with the Red Cross in France. Using letters, diaries, and photographs, she created an unusual typescript, Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country, 1918-1919, when she returned home from the Great War. Pasted opposite the relevant sections of the narrative are roughly 281 photographs and other memorabilia. Starting in August 1918, Hall captured in rich detail her passage from New York to France, her pursuit of a Red Cross posting as close to the front as possible, and then her day-to-day experiences at a canteen at Châlons sur Marne, where she continued to work for a number of months following the Armistice in November 1918. Her photographs document a significant range of her war experience, from the quotidian life at Châlons sur Marne to the exploration of battlefields at Longwy and Verdun.

Margaret R. Higonnet, the volume’s editor, is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, and an Affiliate at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. At the intersection of feminist theory with history and comparative literature, she has published extensively on gender and World War I, editing Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987), Lines of Fire: Women Writers of World War I (1999), and Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of War (2001).

Susan Solomon is Yardımcı Doçent (or Assistant Professor) of Humanities, Western Languages and Literatures, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She will comment on her research into the life and photographs of Margaret Hall.

Suzanne Diefenbach is Margaret Hall's great niece. She will share her recollections of "Aunts" and life with her at Paradise Hill Farm in Hull, Massachusetts.

To Reserve: Register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560.

This project explores the changing texture and relationship of trade and diplomacy between American and Chinese traders and diplomats from 1784 to the 1860s. The consumption of luxury goods by both Americans and Chinese and the relationship between the U.S. and Great Britain abroad both helped to shape U.S.-China diplomacy in the nineteenth century. This program will present an overview of the project but will focus on findings from traders' records at the MHS.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS19 July 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

From Massachusetts to Australia, justices of the peace and other equivalent magistrates provided an exportable unit of local government responsible for the vast majority of judicial and administrative decisions. This project investigates how shared assumptions about magisterial authority contributed to the construction of new jurisdictions incorporating non-English lands and peoples. In New England, this British model of local government proved so adaptable that it allowed justices of the peace to assert independence during a period of imperial crisis.

This presentation will provide a brief historical overview of the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, a massive public-works project that led to the disincorporation of four rural towns in the western portion of the Commonwealth and radically transformed 39 square miles of land during the 1930s and 1940s. After tracing the arc of this story, it will delve into the environmental worldview and vision of the Quabbin project held by Arthur Shurcliff, the landscape architect employed by the Boston Metropolitan District Commission to reform the grounds surrounding this new, artificial lake.

Brown BagThe Virgin Vote: Young Americans in the Age of Popular Politics23 July 2014.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PMJonathan Grinspan, University of Virginia/ Jefferson Scholars Foundation

Young people fueled American democracy at its most popular. Between 1840 and 1900, children, youths and young adults turned out at rallies and elections, searching for identity, advancement, and fun. Many viewed the political system as a route to adulthood, during a period of major social instability. At the same time, politicians wooed first-time “virgin voters,” lobbied young women to influence the men in their lives, and recruited children as future partisans. Their interest helped bring about the highest voter turnouts in U.S. history. This project explores this fascinating and forgotten relationship between public politics and personal aspirations.

MHS TourMHS Tour: The History and Collections of the MHS26 July 2014.Saturday, 10:00AM - 11:30AM

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Teacher Workshop, Public ProgramOld Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation30 July 2014 to 31 July 2014This workshop will take place in Milford, New Hampshire, and Pepperell, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Freedom's Way National Heritage Area

What was it like to live in a town that had existed for years (if not a full century or more) before becoming part of a new nation in 1776? Designed for educators and local history enthusiasts, this workshop will explore some of the social, cultural, economic, and political concerns expressed by New England towns as the United States was attempting to form a new government in the 1780s and 1790s. We will discuss the truly participatory, well-informed conversations taking place in town halls and meeting places throughout the new colonies-turned-states. By turning an eye towards local politics and events we will rediscover the ways in which “ordinary people” contributed to America’s creation story.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

investigate what it was like to live in an old town in a new country and discover what changed for the inhabitants of different towns as new government structures were implemented.

discuss the concerns (both local and national) expressed by Massachusetts & New Hampshire residents in various towns while the American government was being created in the years after the revolution.

explore the ways in which geography, economy, and social/cultural practices influenced local concerns.

discover evidence of local concerns, and discussions of national policies, in primary sources held by local repositories and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

explore new ways of engaging students and local communities in their history.

There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

This project examines the shifting perceptions of spirituous liquors in the Atlantic World throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the rise of commercial distilling, particularly in regard to rum, gin, and whiskey, this research explores the evolution of liquors from their use a wholesome source of medicine to a pernicious, societal threat.